Sector General 01 Hospital Station by James White

Author:James White [White, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-08T05:43:40+00:00

O’Mara broke in at that point: “If Arretapec gave the brontosaurus the teleportive ability by working directly on its brain, why can’t the same be done for us?”

“Probably because we’ve managed fine without it,”

replied Conway. “The patient, on the other hand, was shown and made to understand that this faculty was necessary for its survival. Once this is realized the ability will be used and passed on, because it is latent in nearly all species. Now that Arretapec has proved the idea possible his whole race will want to get in on it. Fostering intelligence on what would otherwise be a dead planet is the sort of big project which appeals to those high-minded types …

Conway was thinking of that single, precognitive glimpse he had had into Arretapec’s mind, of the civilization which would develop on the brontosaur’s world and the monstrous yet strangely graceful beings that it would contain in some far, far, future day. But he did not mention these thoughts aloud.

Instead he said, “Like most telepaths Arretapec was both squeamish and inclined to discount purely physical methods of investigation. It was not until I introduced him to Dr. Mannon’s dog, and pointed out that a good way to get an animal to use a new ability was to teach it tricks with it, that we got anywhere. I showed that trick where I throw cushions at the dog and after wrestling with them for a while it arranges them in a heap and lets me throw it on top of them, thus demonstrating that simple-minded creatures don’t mind-within limits, that is-a little roughhousing—”

“So that,” said O’Mara, gazing reflectively at the ceiling, “is what you do in your spare time..

Colonel Skempton coughed. He said, “You’re playing down your own part in this. Your foresight in stuffing that hulk with tractor and pressor beams …

“There’s just one other thing before I see it off,”

Conway broke in hastily. “Arretapec heard some of the men calling the patient Emily. It would like to know why.”

“It would,” said O’Mara disgustedly. He pursed his lips then went on, “Apparently one of the maintenance men with an appetite for early fiction—

the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne to be exact—dubbed our patient Emily Brontosaurus. I must say that I feel a pathological interest in a mind which thinks like that…” O’Mara looked as though there was a bad smell in the room.

Conway groaned in sympathy. As he turned to go, he thought that his last and hardest job might be in explaining what a pun was to the high-minded Dr.

Arretapec.

Next day Arretapec and the dinosaur left, the Monitor transport officer whose job it was to keep the hospital supplied heaved a great sigh of relief, and Conway found himself on ward duty again. But this time he was something more than a medical mechanic. He had been placed in charge of a section of the Nursery, and although he had to use data, drugs and case-histories supplied by Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, there was nobody breathing directly down his neck.

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